Chapter Text
Katsuki Yuuri isn’t human.
The bleach-white wings on his back can personally attest to that. Not that he minds; in his opinion, they’re perfectly sized. He’s able to fold them to fit under a baggy coat should he need to go out, not that he does much.
But if he does, it’s usually done under the cover of night. When the clock strikes twelve, he slips his glasses into his pants pocket, and steps off the rooftop of his derelict apartment complex. He falls freely through floors 30 to 10, and right at the last moment, he stretches out his wings and he is soaring upwards, upwards , held up by the loving arms of zephyr. With the wind in his face and the stars in his wings, he feels indestructible.
It is also at night when Yuuri does what he’s born to do: to play cupid, and quite literally so. (Perhaps ‘born’ isn’t the right word, considering he literally popped into existence .)
Katsuki Yuuri isn’t human. Humankind is burdened with the freedom of being, but for Yuuri, the sole reason he was put upon this earth is to deal out love with his bow and arrows.
He blinks away the dryness in his eyes. Tonight, Yuuri finds himself perched on a church roof, awaiting his first target of the night.
He doesn’t have to wait for long. A steady staccato of boots against gravel sound off in the distance, warning Yuuri of a presence. From the shadowy horizon, a woman with her face buried in her scarf appears in his sights.
In his sweaty left hand is a bow, and strapped to his back is a quiver. In his quiver there are exactly 5 arrows, each of them tipped with a feather plucked from his own wing. He reaches behind him to slide one out of the quiver and onto the bow.
Taking a deep breath, Yuuri aims. Then releases his bowstring.
The arrow sails through the frigid night air with an audible whip , and pierces Scarf Lady squarely between her shoulder blades, stopping her abruptly in her tracks. As it should, the arrow disintegrates into the night air as magic travels down the shaft from the feather and into the arrowhead, and into her bloodstream.
With nothing to hang onto, the snow white feather spirals down to lay upon the gravel.
From behind his glasses, Yuuri watches as the magic takes effect, just as it has a thousand times before. This is how it goes: the core temperature rises, the pupils dilate, and the heart rate rises to near dangerous levels. Wheezing, Scarf Lady brings a gloved hand to rest over her heart, the rat-tat-tat of it beating out a tattoo against her ribs.
She has fallen in love.
As far as Yuuri knows, there is no cure for this malaise, except for another one of his arrows. Scarf Lady will be plagued by thought of that elusive someone every waking moment. There will be no reprieve in sleep either; her affection will haunt her even in dreams.
Yuuri knows what he is.
Cupid, Eros; these are just some of the names used to refer to people like him.
(People like him. There are others like him out there too. Well, at least that’s what Phichit tells him.)
He acutely remembers the day he came into being, just like it was yesterday. Yuuri’s first memory is of the snow, the whiteness of it burning like a brand in his mind’s eye. Before anything, he had felt the chill against his bare skin, and how it bit mercilessly into his flesh. He had opened his eyes after, and saw it floating down from the grey sky; the gentle sight at odds with its bitter nature.
A word popped up in his head, as if in answer. This is snow , he thought wonderingly.
His second memory was of his body. Or rather; he remembered how heavy and alien his own flesh was to him. Experimentally, he willed his arms to move, and almost surprised himself when they obeyed him. Yuuri wiggled his fingers.
Arms, he thought. Body. Flesh. Self.
Then, naturally, Who am I?
Another thing about being not-human: Yuuri is invisible to pretty much almost everyone.
Which, in all consideration, is a double-edged sword. The good part of being invisible is that he gets to stretch out his wings in public if he wants to, and that he doesn’t have to explain why there’s always a bulk underneath the back of his jacket. Plus, he’s also able to sneak books out of the dusty neighbourhood library on occasion.
It wasn’t as if Yuuri didn’t try to do it the proper way, but itsincredibly hard to borrow books when one doesn’t have a library card (or any paper identification whatsoever, for that matter).
(Yuuri always returns his books. He has the wings, he reckons he might as well act the part.)
Nevertheless, there is still a need to be careful. He is invisible, not intangible; footprints follow whenever he walks on snow, and the trees still bend from the wind under his wings. It does no good to cause a frenzy, and Yuuri knows from experience after that fateful incident with the dogs. So on the rare days that he does go out, Yuuri is very, very careful.
And the bad side about being invisible is that, well, you’re invisible, and it gets painfully, painfully lonely.
Yuuri’s only friend is Phichit, the vivacious wind spirit who just happens to be the first person that had ever talked to him. Phichit, thinking him human, had in all senses of the word swooped down onto Yuuri on their first meeting.
The wind spirit had been the one to teach him how to fly. Trust me , he had said, his tempest-grey eyes shining, You won’t fall with me around.
But Phichit never stays for long. It is in his nature; soaring on gusts and riding the storm, he goes wherever the wind does. The first time he left, he left without a word, and took with him the wind beneath Yuuri’s wings. After the brief six months of which he was seen and liked , the prospect of solitude once again had been crushing, like dashing the water from the cup of a dying man. Yuuri thought Phichit gone forever, and walked like a man half dead for weeks after.
Did I say something? Do something? he would think at 4.23am in the morning, his mind mercilessly dissecting every interaction, every laugh with the wind spirit for that one fatal mistake that drove his friend away. Phichit was so kind and friendly, the fault had to be with him. It had to.
Eventually, he picked himself up and moved on, because what else was there to do ? Until two months later, a freak lightning storm had descended upon the city. Yuuri had decided to call it ahead and flew home to sleep, only to find Phichit sheepishly squatting on his windowsill.
It became clear to Phichit that not only was his friend Cupid, but he was also a cupid with the world's biggest glass heart. Every subsequent departure, he makes sure to give Yuuri a week notice, because Yuuri is his best friend whom glass heart was his duty to protect.
As far as Yuuri knows, his magic works like this:
- By virtue of his being, Yuuri is magical, and said magic manifests mostly in his wings and feathers. The arrows are merely a way to get that magic from Point A (himself) to Point B (his targets).
- Upon landing, the arrow acts as a conduit, channeling his magic down and into the bloodstream, where it starts to take hold.
- Yuuri isn’t powerful as the Real Cupid, which means he can’t make someone fall in love instantaneously on sight. What his magic can do is to act on pre-existing fancies and zoom in on that until it’s all his target can think about.
And he knows this because he had tailed his first few targets for weeks, carefully writing down his observations on the back of a receipt. It’s not as if he would know firsthand. After all, he most definitely did not prick himself on his own arrow, because that would be stupid and sad and desperate.
(Except that he did, once. He had been stupid and sad and desperate, and one stormy night during that bleak two months when Phichit was gone, he had pricked himself with one of his own arrows, hungry for even a morsel of this love that he doles out on a daily basis but reserves none for himself.)
(Needless to say, the arrow didn't work. Secretly, he remains glad of the fact. If he did fall in love, the other person would never be able to see him, much less fall in love with him. Yuuri’s glass heart would shatter into smithereens, and not even Phichit would be able to put it together again.)